English word clipping in a diachronic perspective
(Donka Minkova, UCLA)
1. Definition of terms. Scope of coverage
This study describes the diachronic patterns of clipping in Old and Middle English and
compares them to the patterns observed after the 16thcentury. Clipping is a subtype of
shortening, so is truncation, and so are many other processes such as abbreviations and
acronyms, blends, back-formation. The term truncation will be avoided here since at least in
some sources it is either a cover term for any shortened form, or it refers to hypocoristic forms
(names), while clipping is reserved specifically for “truncated words which are not personal
names”, as in Lappe (2007: 4); that is the usage adopted here. The clarification is needed
because the application of the terms varies depending on the analysis. Bauer, Lieber and Plag
(2013: 404) consider the two types “distinct morphological categories”. Berg’s (2011: 16)
position is that “In much the same way as foreclippings and backclippings are different
instantiations of the same phenomenon called clipping, the shortening of common nouns and
first names should be understood as a unitary process.” He attributes the partially different
strategies of shortening for common nouns and names not to morphological, but to pragmatic
factors, “disparate levels of availability”, while Jamet (2009: 16) considers the two terms
synonymous. Bauer and Huddleston (2002: 1635) keep (nick)names out of the picture because
they “often introduce extraneous complications”. The term clipping itself was first recorded
in 1933 – the OED attributes the coinage to Eric Partridge.1 Jespersen’s own term stump-words
(1922: 169-171) did not catch on.
Clipping as used here involves the loss of at least one syllable. Cases of consonant loss
as in know, soften, climb fall under the more general terms of aphesis or apheresis for initial loss
([kn] > [n] in know), syncope, or word-internal cluster simplification ([ft] > [f] in soften), and
apocope, or word-final cluster simplification ([mb] > [m] in climb). As these terms are also used
to refer to syllabic loss, they are ambiguous with respect to the size and composition of the
discarded material, the surplus.2
Another technical term for shortenings used in the literature is subtractive derivation,
which can include clippings, blends, or it can be applied to the deletion of phonological
material which results in morphological change; this term will be avoided because of its
1
OED: E. Partridge Slang To-day & Yesterday i. iii. 27: Slang delights to curtail (clip, abbreviate, shorten) words...
Many such clippings have passed into standard English: cab <cabriolet, 'bus < omnibus. Jespersen (1922: 170)
uses “Stump-Words” as the title of the relevant section, but in the text itself he uses clippings; the OED
attribution may need to be revised.
2
Surplus for the discarded material and residue for the new form are terms suggested in Bauer and Huddleston
(2002: 1634). Aphesis excludes loss of stressed syllables, which does occur in English, as in shrooms for
mushrooms, ‘burbs (1977) for suburbs. Parenthesized dates after lexemes are the earliest recorded dates for that
headword in the online OED3 (http://www.oed.com/). For my examples and statistics I used the ‘Advanced
Search’ option in the OED for ‘aphetic’, ‘aphesis’, ‘shortened’, ‘abbreviated’, ‘abbrev.’ (‘clipped/clipping’ is
used as an etymological term only 3 times) under ‘Etymology’. The searches were further refined by ‘Date of
First Citation’.
The terminological survey is not exhaustive, see further Cannon (1989), Mattiello (2013). The term aphesis
was originally an extension of apheresis, the latter involving specifically initial unstressed vowels as in squire <
esquire, but now the two terms are used interchangeably (OED). Some sources, e.g. Pyles and Algeo (1993: 275)
separate aphesis ‘a sound change’ from clipping, so that ‘féssor < professor is aphesis (only unstressed syllables
can be aphetic), but prof < professor is clipping, acknowledging that the results may ‘look similar’.
1
broader scope of reference. Besides, derivation is a type of word-formation; labeling clipping a
subtype of subtractive derivation implies commitment to a specific morphological taxonomy.
Whether clipping should be classified as a word-formation process is debatable. Much
of the recent literature on clippings seeks to determine the patterns and constraints on
clipping, treating it as a systematic process, e.g. Plag (2003), Lappe (2007), but the assumption
is not universally shared. Haspelmath (2002: 25) excludes clippings from word-formation
processes and opts for word-creation because “the resulting new words do not show systematic
meaning-sound resemblances of the sort that speakers would recognize.” Another label is
extra-grammatical morphology, see Dressler (1997), also Mattiello (2013) who discuss various
taxonomic choices, including “marginal” and “expressive” morphology. No consensus has
been reached. Durkin (2009: 116) considers the results of clipping unpredictable, and most
recently, Don (2014: 27) places clippings outside of word-formation and writes: “clippings can
result from deletion of just any part of the word, and there does not seem to be a clear
pattern.”
As the survey in Section 2 will show, “deletion of just any part of the word” is
unnecessarily cavalier: the phonological and the morphological factors interact differently at
different periods. The directionality of clipping in English changes direction quite dramatically
after the 17th century. Thus, there are clear patterns emerging in English diachronically, and
the trajectories of change call for an account that goes beyond randomness. Moreover, the fact
that there are differences in the treatment of this process historically suggests that it can be a
window into the structure of the ambient synchronic systems. The macro-perspective on
clipping allows an account in terms of well-formedness and faithfulness constraints: ONSET,
STRESS, Morphological identity, Alignment (ALIGN-L). So, while I will not opine on what the
most appropriate label for clippings should be, marginal, expressive, or extra-grammatical
morphology, I hope that the diachronic perspective will broaden our understanding of the
nature of the process.
Clipping does not affect the syntactic category of the input, though occasionally the
clipped form’s part of speech is that of the head of a phrase, while its phonological base is that
of a modifier, as in pub, n. (1800) < public house; perm, n. (1927) < permanent wave. Clipping can
change the semantic content: defence (1297) > fence (1533) ‘the practice of using a sword’;
fanatic, n. (1659) > fan (1889), and it typically affects the pragmatic status of an item – clipped
words “express primarily the attitudinal component of diminution, marking familiarity with
the denoted object or concept. Like abbreviations, they often convey … in-group status …and
are often restricted in usage to subgroups of the speech community…” (Bauer, Lieber and Plag
2013: 402). This pragmatic aspect of clipping is recognized in all of the scholarship on the
subject; it shifts the word’s “linguistic value”, changes the “emotional background” (Marchand
1969: 441); it is a creative, sometimes ludic, process.
The process of clipping is defined phonologically, morphosyntactically, semantically,
and pragmatically:
(1)
3
Characteristics of clipping:3
The characteristics in (1) can be extended to another productive process: the blending of two clipped forms:
chunnel (1914) < Channel tunnel; motel (1925) < motor hotel, spam (1937) < spiced ham. These forms will not be
addressed because clipping is only one step in the process, as is suffixation, or “embellished” clipping as in
movie (1909), commie (1928); suffixed clippings will not be considered here.
2
!
!
!
!
Prosodic: loss of at least one syllable
Morphosyntactic: no functional category shift
Semantic: typically preserves the denotative meaning
Pragmatic: typically involves shift of connotative meaning/register
The usage characteristic in the last bullet in (1) is perhaps the least stable. With time the
downshift of register accompanying clipping may be reversed, as in lunch (1829) < luncheon
(1580) “formerly objected to as vulgar” (OED), mob (1688) < mobile (vulgus) considered
“miserably curtailed”4; derogatory miss ‘whore’ (1606) < mistress became a neutral title miss
(1667), and phone, plane, taxi, perk are no longer just colloquialisms.
Traditionally, the handbooks describe clippings with reference to the original location of
the rejected material: left-edge, middle, right-edge, or both edges (Marchand 1969: 441 ff,
Hansen et al. 1990: 148-150, Bauer and Huddleston 2002: 1634-1636, Mattiello 2013: 82, Miller
2014: 173-186). This linear concatenative taxonomy has held its value as an informative step in
recent focused studies of clippings, see Berg 2011.
(2)
Linear taxonomy of clippings:
(a) Fore-clipping/left-edge: OF engin > gin (1200) ‘ingenuity’; alone > lone (1377); defend >
fend (1330); raccoon > coon (1742), suburbs > burbs (1977)
(b) Middle/syncope: L.*anchorēta > OE ancra ‘anchoress’; OF comencer, ME †comse, v.
‘commence’ (a 1225- 1399); sithen > sin ‘thereafter’ (1330); fantasy > fancy (1465)
(c) Back-clipping/right edge: OF baudetrot > bawd (1362); Du. genever ‘juniper’ > gin (1689);
luncheon > lunch (1829)
(d) Fore- and back-clipping/ambi-clipping: influenza > flu (1839), detective > tec (1879),
refrigerator > fridge (1926)
Another taxonomy is based on whether the retained part, the residue, is on the left or the right
(Adams 1973: 135 ff, Bauer 1983: 233 ff). A theoretical extension of this residue-centric analysis
has been developed in studies of clippings in terms of prosodic morphology, as in Nelson 2003
for French, Lappe 2007 for English, Alber & Arndt-Lappe 2012, Bauer, Lieber and Plag 2013: 402
ff. They focus on the structure of the output rather than on the location of the deleted
material. In that approach the output conforms to some specified template, hence the label
templatic morphology.
4
J. Addison in the Spectator (1711), cited in the OED.
3
(3)
Clippings according to output:
Monosyllabic: coz (1563) < cousin; coon (1742) < raccoon; doc
(1850, 1978) < doctor, or documentary
(a) Phonological
Disyllabic: story (1200) < history; gator (1844) < alligator, memo
(1705) < memorandum
(b) Morphoprosodic5:
tween (c.1300) < between; versal (1599) < universal; †panion, n.(15531592) < companion; plane (1908) < aeroplane; mare (1994) <
nightmare; klepto (1958) < kleptomaniac
(3) shows a taxonomy of clippings based on the idea that what matters in the process is not
what is taken away, or where it is taken from, but what part of the base is preserved. The
initial division here is based on the morphological status of the input: coon, doc, story, gator in
(3a) are based on a single-root input, while in (3b) the input base has recognizable
morphologically complex structure, as in uni-versal, night-mare. In Lappe’s (2007: 71) database
of 702 word clippings, only 27, or 3.85% belong to this type. She separates two types of
morphoprosodic shortening based on the residue: forms whose residue is a bound root or a
combining form, such as klepto, and forms whose residue does not coincide with morphological
boundaries, such as prefab, illegit. This latter type is arguably an extended case of phonological
back-clipping as in (2c, 2d). Importantly, she writes:
The corpus used … does not contain enough data to allow any definite
conclusions on morphoprosodic truncation. It will be the task of future research
to further investigate this issue, empirically testing both the justification of the
form class that has been set up there and the structural properties of these
forms. (Lappe 2007: 71)
Since the early historical processes of clipping are heavily morphological, the current study
attempts to address what Lappe saw as a “future research task”. For a start, note that the
linear typology in (2) and the residue-based typology in (3) reveal complementary, yet
different aspects of clipping; as we will see in Section 2, restricting the taxonomy obscures the
diachronic picture. The macro-perspective on clippings in English requires reference to both
directionality and the phonological and morphological properties of the residue.
A note on the scope of coverage: This is a study of clippings of common nouns,
adjectives, adverbs and verbs. Hypocoristic forms: Ed, Biz, Jen are only referred in passing. Also
excluded are suffixed clippings: comfy, hubby, combo, reduced phrases: will < last will, private <
private soldier, clippings combined with blending, and preserving the input compound
information: Caltech < California Institute of Technology, SoCal < Southern California, Tex-Mex < Texan
and Mexican, see note 3. Shortenings marked as “graphic” in the OED are also ignored. That’s
5
The term is used in Lappe (2007: 70-71) for cases in which “the morphological structure of the base word plays a
more prominent role in determining the structure of the clipping”. This is an appropriate term for clippings
involving identifiable and uniformly unaccented affixes, as in Old and Middle English, see 2.1 and 2.2 below.
4
the empirical side; the analytic focus is not on why clippings occur in principle, but why they
happen in a particular way at a particular time in English.
The next section presents a survey of the findings for Old English (OE) and Middle
English (ME). Sections 3 and 4 address the analytical entailments of the diachronic data,
compare these data to the current patterns of clipping, and explore the ways in which the
long-term perspective enriches our reconstruction of English historical prosody and
morphology.
2. A historical overview of the data
While clipping in Present-Day English (PDE) has been a much-studied topic in this century, as
far as I can tell the diachronic perspective has not been revisited for nearly five decades.
Sundén (1904) and Slettengren (1912) are descriptive works with enduring value as a
source of early data. Jespersen (1922, 1933, 1942) was a pioneer in moving beyond the
classification of the available empirical material, treating it in terms of language acquisition
and the drive towards monosyllabicity. Marchand’s (1969) chapter on clippings, included “with
reservations” (p. 441) in his monumental book on English word-formation, became the
standard reference and the basis of all subsequent diachronic comments, see Hansen et al.
(1990: 146-150), Nevalainen (1999: 432-433), Kastovsky (2006: 213-214, 269). Unlike Jespersen,
who considers the process one of the most characteristic traits of the language, and uses it to
support his general view of the superiority and monosyllabic efficiency of English (1942: 551),
Marchand (1969: 441) believes that clipping “is not relevant to the linguistic system (la langue)
itself, but to speech (la parole).” Both sources note the historical discrepancy between foreclipping and back-clipping in earlier English and the PDE patterns, yet they do not take the
discussion beyond that observation. Miller (2014: 173-176), the most comprehensive recent
update of the research on the conditioning of various types of clippings, offers a classification
with reference to the surplus location – right-edge (mike < microphone) vs. left edge (gator <
alligator), as well as useful example dates from the OED, but no diachronic analysis.
2.1 Old English
When digging into historical records one has to recognize the conundrum created by the
marked nature of shortened forms, which belong to an informal register of speech, and the
type of formal written language that has survived. The impasse is real, though there are some
side-trails that can at least confirm that linguistic shortcuts are no recent invention. Grendel is
not *Grend, and Beowulf is not *Wulfie in OE (though note OHG Wolfo for Wolfbrand, cited in
Marchand 1969: 449), but the historical survey of hypocoristics shows some forms as in (4):
(4)
OE hypocoristics
Berter < Berhthere (Bibire 1998: 165)
Cutha < King Cuthwulf; Sibba < Sigebeorht (Coates 2006: 325-6)
Goda < Godgifu; Saba < (King) Sǣbeorht; Totta < Torhthelm (Clark 1992: 459)
OHG Wolfo < Wolfbrand (Marchand 1969: 449)
Clark (1992: 459) writes: “The homilist Wulfstan’s choice of Lupus as his pen-name might imply
that familiarly he was called Wulf, but that is a speculation.” More intriguing is the discussion
of the spelling of names on coins in Bibire (1998: 156), who points out that moneyers (die5
cutters) were less well educated than the scribes, they were coming from a different social
background, and therefore they were prone to use less conservative linguistic forms, or
hypocoristic name-forms. He finds, interestingly, that there is a marked discrepancy between
the treatment of king-names and moneyer-names on individual coins.6
A considerable set of alternate forms was fully documented in OE borrowings from
Latin. First, we find fore-clipped forms traced both to vulgar Latin, as is the case with bishop,
and parallel forms that are not attested in Latin, such as pistelarie < *epistelari, ‘the book from
which the epistle is read’. As Pogatscher (1888: 144) acknowledges, it is not always possible to
determine whether the shortened forms arose in Germanic or whether they go back to
colloquial Latin.
(5) Clipping of Latin loanwords in OE:
(a) Fore-clippings
OE bisceop < vulgar Latin (e)biscopus < episcopus
OE stær~ster~steor < Lat. (h)istoria ‘story”
OE magdala < Lat amigdala ‘almond tree’
OE moniaca < Latin ammoniac
OE pistle < Latin epistola; OE pistelarie < Latin epistolarium
OE postol < Lat. apostolOE spaldum < Lat. asphaltum
OE *spendan (a-, for-) < Lat expendere, or (later) OF despendre
OE Spene/Spenum < (late) Latin Spānia for earlier Hispānia (Ispānia)
OE fille < Lat. chaer(e)phylla ‘chervil’
(b) Back-clipping
OE cranic (e) ~ cranc < Lat. chronica ‘chronicle’
OE fic ~ uic ~ fig < Lat. ficus ‘fig-tree’
OE ylp, ME alp, also OE elpend < Latin elephantem
OE kalend < Lat. kalendae, kalendas, pl. ‘month’
OE regel~regl~reogol < Lat. regula ‘rule, principle’
OE torr, early ME tūr (<OF) < Lat. turris ‘tower’
Clearly, variables involving clipping would have been familiar to at least some OE speakers; the
significance of the examples in (5a) is that they provide a template for non-morphological
clipping. The common tendency in (5a) is deletion of an initial unstressed vowel in nouns –
there were no nouns in OE starting with unstressed <a-, e->. The new forms in (5a) have the
properties defined in (1), yet they need to be qualified further: unlike post-ME clipping, all of
the input words in (5) are loans and they often violate the prosodic and phonological template
for nouns in OE. The clipped variants can therefore be used as a diagnostic of the degree of
nativization of the loans – cautiously -- because of their uncertain provenance, see above.
6
Colman (2014: 131) finds Bibire’s (1998) suggestion “untenable”, but she offers no further comments on that
point. She does, however recognize the presence in Old English of “lall names” (ibid. :126), “a category of
words that belong to the nursery and are monothematic”. She uses the term hypocoristic for shortenings
based on non-monothematic names, and offers an insightful analysis of lall-names originating in child
language and subsequently adopted by the adults. On gemination in lall-names in Old English see further her
discussion: Colman (2014: 126-129, 146-150).
6
The back-clippings in (5b) need further qualifications. Pogatscher (1888: 148 ff) labels the
loss of material at the right edge “Suffixvertauschung”. Further examples of that pattern are
shown in (6):
(6)
Suffixvertauschung of loan-words:
OE abbod ~ ab(b)(e) < Lat. abbat-em (acc.)
OE altar ~ altare < Lat. altāre
OE calc < Lat. calceus ‘sandal’
OE camel < Lat. camelus
OE mentel < Lat mantellum ‘mantle’
OE camp < Lat campus
OE casul < Lat casula ‘cloak’
OE ceren < Lat. carenum ‘wine’
OE cex < Corn, Welsh ceges, ‘kex, keck’7
OE carr < OWelsh carrec ‘rock’
The label in (6) is prompted by the loss of the original gender-marking case endings –us, -a, -um
in the course of adopting Latin nouns. Not surprisingly, many of the shortened items are
shared with other early Germanic languages. This is technically the same as back-clipping, and
probably signals colloquialization of the loan-word, but it would be a stretch to consider them
precursors of the later patterns because the process is limited to loans and because it is not a
typically “insular” process. The usefulness of such forms, arguably, is that they attest to the
availability, at least for the educated clerics, of doublet forms with identical left-edge
alignment, the latter of increasing importance in later periods.
Another pattern of clipping widely attested in the native OE lexicon is illustrated in (7);
the numbers are the counts given by DOE8
(7)
Instability of ge- in OE:
(a) OE fore-clippings as minority innovative forms:
bann (x1) ‘command’ < gebann (x40)
bǣru, pl. (x2) ‘behavior’ < gebǣre (x55)
bed (x75) ‘prayer’ < gebed (x ca.1500)
byrd (x3) ‘birth’ < gebyrd (x110)
būr (x1) ‘free, but economically dependent peasant’ < gebūr (x24)
dēfe (x2) ‘fitting’< gedēfe (x75); dēfelic (x1) < gedēfelic (x5); dafenlic (x2) < gedafenlic (x90)
delf (x4) ‘trench, ditch’ < gedelf (x5)
dwola (x11) ‘error’ < gedwola (x140); also dwol, adj. (x2) ‘heretical’ < gedwol (x6)
fēa (x2) ‘joy’ < gefēa (x ca 600)
feoht (x13) ‘fight’ < gefeoht (x ca 700)
fēra (x6) ‘companion’ < gefēra (x ca 450)
(b) OE ge- forms as minority innovative forms
bēacen ‘sign’ (x175) ~ gebēacen (x1)
drōf (x6) ‘turbid, muddy’ ~ gedrōf (x2)
dropa ‘drop’ (x70) ~ gedropa (x2)
7
The etymology is from the Dictionary of Old English (DOE: http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doe/ ); the OED takes
the Welsh word to be a borrowing from English.
8
The current (2015) release of the Dictionary of Old English (DOE) covers approximately 25-30% of the total project,
from A-G.
7
fadung ‘arrangement’ (15) ~ gefadung (10)
fāh, fāg ‘hostile’ (x40) ~ gefāh (x3)
In (7a) the token count is heavily in favor of the prefixed base, with the fore-clippings as a
minority, while an inverse process, innovative addition of the prefix is illustrated in (7b).9 The
instability of ge-, a- in OE is widely recorded and discussed. These prefixes were largely
desemanticized (Minkova 2008); their increasing redundancy and interchangeability is a major
contributing factor in their reduction and loss, see Hiltunen (1983). Among the six fully
unstressable prefixes in OE: (a-, be-, ge-, for- of-, oþ), only a-, be-, and ge- are light syllables. All
three can affect the syntactic categorization, i.e., they are head-prefixes, but the head-hood of
a- and ge- became progressively obscure, starting in the north in the tenth century
(Slettengren 1912: 101-102, Hiltunen 1983), a development rightly associated with
Scandinavian influence.10
The significance of the variables in (7) goes beyond their grammatical and semantic nature.
More relevant for the history of clipping is the existence of native doublet forms, with or
without a left-edge light unstressed syllable which is only marginally identifiable as a
morpheme, ge- less so than a-. A remarkable, and previously unnoticed, fact about the
examples in (7a) and (7b) is the striking contrast in the frequency of attestation: the clipped
forms in (7a) are the minority, while the reverse is true of the prefixal forms with an
innovative ge-. The “decapitated” forms (Slettengren 1912: 102) in (7a) are incipient, lowfrequency variants, and it is likely that dropping the ge- at the left edge correlates with
colloquial usage. Phonologically, the variation in (7) is the same as that of the loanwords in
(5a).
At this stage, i.e. late OE, the dominant pattern of shortening native words was foreclipping, a pattern that becomes marginalized in PDE, see (14) in Section 3.4. At the right edge,
the fact that at least some hypocoristic forms, as in (4), have made it into the records suggest,
in parallel with current usage, that there is no diachronically traceable change in the way
speakers treat names; the process is typologically the same, but the special register of such
forms has kept them out of the earliest records, though see Colman (2014) for extensive
detective and analytical work in that area.
2.2 Middle English
Turning to ME, we find the pattern in (5a) and (7a) recurring in loans from Anglo-Norman (AN)
and Old French (OF).
(8)
Mixed phonological and morphoprosodic fore-clipping in AN and OF loans11
9
Presumably the lexicographers’ choice of the head-word first form entry is numerically driven. This does not
invalidate the point about fore-clipping as an innovative pattern and the coexistence of full and clipped
forms in the lexicon.
10
Hiltunen (1983: 94-102) makes a strong case for “semantic multiplicity” as a trigger of the breakdown of
prefixation in OE, see similarly Kastovsky (1992: 377).
11
The bundling together of Anglo-Norman and Old French is a short-cut: separating the sources, as Slettengren
(1912) does, reveals an important distinction: the rate of fore-clipping in Anglo-Norman is considerably
higher than the corresponding rate in Old French; see Pope (1934: 439) on the semantic bleaching of prefixes
and the higher rate of pre-tonic syllable loss in Anglo-Norman.
8
mend, v. (1225) < amend
cheker, n. (1330) < escheker
cumber (1303) < encumber
fend v. (1330) < defend
stoun(d), v. (1330) < estoner
quest (1350) < request
cense (1382) < incense
monishing (1382) < admonishing
print, v. (1382) < imprint
bandon (1400) < abandon
spute (1225) < dispute
stress (1303) < distress
scomfit (1303) < discomfit
liver (1330) < deliver
senye (OE, 1225- ) < ensign
liverance (1380) < deliverance
minish (1382) < diminish
colet (1382) < acolyte
faunt (1382) < infant
till (1398) < lentil
The majority of the attestations in (8) are instances of dropping of a Romance prefix: a-, ad-,
de-, dis-, en-, in-, not unlike the cases in (5a) and (7a). The set as a whole is labeled “mixed”,
because the discarded material is not necessarily an identifiable prefix, even in the donor
language, e.g. ME cheker < AN escheker, OF eschekier ‘chess’; ME scomfit < AN descounfit, descumfit,
OF desconfit; ME spute < OF desputer; faunt < OF enfaunt, enfant ‘infant’; ME till < lentil. These foreclippings are home-grown.
As a whole, the set in (8) reinforces pre-existing ME patterns, where reduced
productivity of native prefixation makes word-initial iambs # σ σ́ (-) # rarer, boosting the
model of monosyllables (fend, quest, print), or of trochees # σ́ σ # (checker, cumber, minish). The
outputs have left-aligned morphological stress, the dominant prosodic contour of the
Germanic component of the vocabulary. Not surprisingly, then, we find that the OE template
in (7a) continues to be robust in the native lexicon of ME:
(9)
Native fore-clipped forms in ME:
back, adv. (1300) < aback
bout 'about' (1250) abuten
mang (?c. 1200) < gemong, onmang
lone 'alone' (1377) < alone
ȝæn (?c. 1200) < onnȝæn
slant adv. (1495) < aslant
The forms in (7a), (8), and (9) share yet another property: the initial syllables of the output
words in all three sets have a filled ONSET. This is an obligatory well-formedness condition on
all fore-clippings in English. I am not aware of any instances of fore-clipping resulting in a
vowel-initial word in OE or ME, no matter whether the output is monosyllabic or not. Since
fore-clipping is a minority pattern in PDE, and so are onsetless words, it is to be expected that
onsetless fore-clippings would be rare, yet among the post-ME fore-clippings we do find e.g.
atomy ‘skeleton’ (1597) < anatomy; †omy, adj.(1674) < loamy; oodles (a1867) < scadoodles
(“perhaps” the right etymology, OED); †outang, (1869) < orangutan; oscine (1892), a chemical
term borrowed from German < hyoscine; the biochemical term opsin (1951) < rhodopsin. This is a
small but notable difference between fore-clipping earlier and now, accompanying the much
more significant switch from fore- to back-clipping in PDE, where ad, amp, ap, info, op, ump are
unexceptional.
The avoidance of vowel-initial stressed words in earlier fore-clipping is important for
the overall history of the ONSET constraint in English: it was inviolable for stressed syllables in
Old English, and as argued in Minkova (2003) the constraint was gradually demoted in ME. The
data on fore-clippings are a window into the continuing relevance of ONSET into PDE; moreover,
the sensitivity of the output to syllable structure underscores the importance of including
9
directionality in the analysis of clippings.
The distinction between morphoprosodic fore-clipping, where the surplus is an
identifiable productive prefix (OE gebed > bed ‘prayer’; ME defend > fend) and fore-clipping
where the morphological autonomy of both the surplus and the residue is unclear (ME i-fihte >
fight, distress > stress) became increasingly opaque in ME. This initiated a shift in the direction of
purely phonological fore-clipping. This is illustrated by the generation, and sometimes quite
prolonged use, of new forms such as in (10), where the parenthesized dates mark the
chronological span of their attestation:
(10) Non-morphological fore-clipping in ‘archaic’ entries in the OED:
† sturb, v. (c.1225 – 1450) < disturb
† vangelist, n. (1330 – 1567) < evangelist, also vangel n.
† spittle, n. < hospital (1225 – 1839); also in Dutch and German
† rabite, n. ‘an Arabian horse’ (1330- 1500) < Arabit (adjective)
† gin, n. ‘a mechanical device’, machine’ (c1386 – 1621) < OF engin12
† till, n. (1398 -1760) < lentil, n.
† sparagus, n. (1543 – 1668) < asparagus13
With the exception of OE hypocoristics as in (4)14, the few items in (5b), and the more general
Suffixvertauschung of loan-words in (6), there have been no cases of back-clipping comparable
to the patterns observed today. This situation continues in ME.15 The closest ME parallels to
back-clipping involve some stems which originally end in [-ən ~ n̩]#: OE eln~elin, ME eln(e) ‘ell’,
OE gamen > ME game ‘game’; OE mæden, mægden> ME mæide ‘maid’, similarly PDE eve, morrow.
The obstacle to including them in the overall history of back-clipping is that the narrowly
defined deletable portion in them is identical to inflectional <-en> in plurals, infinitives, strong
past participles, past indicative plurals; the shortening in those few items is most likely
analogical.
2.3 Later patterns of clipping
Both morphoprosodic and purely phonological fore-clippings continued to be formed after the
16th century, but at a much slower rate.
12
As one of my reviewers remarked usefully, “the same spelling gin can indicate either a fore- or a back-clipping.
This increases the ambiguity of abbreviated terms (vs. the full forms).” The form gin < engine in other senses
pre-dates and post-dates gin < Du. genever ‘juniper’. It is not clear, however, that the ambiguity was a problem
for 19th c. users, when the timeline of quotation evidence in the OED peaks for both words.
13
The OED has a separate entry for †sparagus with the date-span cited here, but it also has ‘sparagus entries under
‘asparagus’ as late as 1785.
14
Hypocoristic forms in ME are much more broadly attested; “baptismal names were used in a wide variety of
hypocoristic or pet forms, especially by ordinary folk”, see McClure (1998). He cites, among others, the names
of the rioting peasants of the 1381 poll tax revolt epitomized as Walle, Thomme, Symme, Belle, Gibbe, Hykke, Colle,
Geffe, Wille, Grigge, Dawe, Hobbe, Lorkyn, Hudde, Judde, Tebbe, Jakke and Hogge.
15
I am not including the loss of stem-final /-ə/# or various inflexional endings in ME although these processes
have the first three of the features of clippings defined in (1), and possibly correlate with register of usage. It
differs from PDE back-clippings in two very important ways: its diffusion was primarily morpho-syntactically,
and not pragmatically driven, and it was tightly linked to language contact.
10
(11)
Post-1500 fore-clippings16
(a) Morphoprosodic fore-clippings
tain, v. (1501) < obtain
judicate, v. (?1577) < adjudicate
trusion (1604) < intrusion
versity (1680) < university
pike (1812) < turnpike
roach (1822) < cockroach
bus (1832) < omnibus17
phone (1880) < telephone
plane (1908) < airplane
chute (1920) < parachute
tingle (1930) < whelk-tingle
fax (1946) < telefax(imile)
hood (1969) < neighborhood
(b) Phonological fore-clippings
gypsy (1537) < Egýptian, n.
rebesk, adj. (1559-1656) < Arabésque
possum (1613) < opóssum
wig (1675) < périwig
squash (1678) < músquash
coon (1742) < raccóon
roo (1841) < kàngaróo
gator (1844) < àlligátor
tash (1894) < moustáche
toon (1932) < cartóon
roid (1978) < stéroid
jamas (1960) < pyjámas also jammies (1928)
sheen (1960) < machíne
Fore-clipping after 1500 shows more of the transitional characteristics already in evidence in
(8). (11a) is an extension of the earlier patterns shown in (7a), (8) and (9). In addition to the
familiar dropping of monosyllabic prefixes as in tain, v. (1501) < obtain, trusion (1604) < intrusion,
the morphoprosodic set of left-edge clippings show innovative features: deletion of more than
a single syllable, e.g. versity (1680) < university, deletion of a morpheme bearing primary stress,
as in pike < turnpike. Often the product of fore-clipping is based on secondary stress, as in roach,
bus, phone, plane, hood.
(11b) is a practically exhaustive list of post-1500 fore-clippings that do not involve a
recognizable morphological component either in the reject or in the new form. In terms of
prosody, for the first time phonological fore-clipping is not categorically bound to lack of
stress in the deleted portion. The surplus syllables in the shaded examples in (11b): wig, squash,
roo, gator, roid, bear primary stress, though in some cases the residue reflects the secondary
stress of the base form, as in alligator, kangaroo.
The mixed picture at the left edge is complicated further by the potential of
resyllabification at word boundaries when the word mimics a clitic group: an unstressed initial
vowel is dropped but the consonant remains in the new form, creating a well-formed output
with a filled onset:
(12)
Fore-clipping in conjunction with clitic group misanalysis:
leven (a1400) ~ elleven~en(d)leve(n) ‘eleven’
noint (1400) ~ anoint
nentes, prep. adv. ‘in line’ (1400) < ME anentist
larum (1453) ‘alarm’ < Middle French <à l'arme> ~ alarme
nemel (1440) ~ enamel
16
1500 is admittedly an arbitrary date, but if we want to draw a time-line, it seems that 1500-1800 is the period of
lowest productivity for clippings as recorded in the OED.
17
The unit omni- is identified as a combining form, recorded since 1593; the <-i> is from the dat. pl. –ibus.
11
notomy (1487-1994) ~ atomy ‘skeleton’ (1597 - 1995) < anatomy
emony (1644 – 1882) < anemony
notty (1725) < anatta (AmInd ‘orange red dye’)
Also treat ‘treatise’(1400-1555) < tretis, treatise n; beck, v. (1300) < beckon18
Fore-clipping is the dominant type of clipping in OE- ME. In its earlest manifestations the
discarded material is limited to unstressed monosyllables. In the native ME word-stock the loss
is morphoprosodic, but in the loan vocabulary the morphological constituency of the surplus is
often obscured. Along with that the prosodic association between lack of stress and
deletability is also destabilized. As for the numbers: my search of over 700 forms identified as
aphetic (=fore-clipping) in the OED shows that over 600 are recorded before the beginning of the
17th c., and about 96% of them are recorded before c. 1800.
All surveys of clipping in English note (a) the lateness of back-clipping, and (b) the
preponderance of back- over fore-clipping in PDE.
(13)
Back-clipping 1500-1700
hake (1538) < haquebut ‘firearm’
coz (1563) < cousin
con (1572) < contra
buck (1577) < buckwheat
chap (1577) < chapman
†scull ‘servant’ (1566-1743) < scullion
sol (1588) < solution
lunch (1591) < luncheon
miss (1606) < mistress
prop < proposition (1607)
brandy (1640) < brandwine ~ brandewine
tymp (1650) < tympan
fan (1682) < fanatic
chum (1684) < chamber-fellow
hack (1687) < hackney
mob (1688) < mobile (vulgus)
incog (1699) < incognito/a
strum (1699) < strumpet
Prosodically, the surplus portion of the forms in (13) is mostly unstressed, though output
forms such as sol < solution, prop < proposition, fan < fanatic show a preference for alignment with
the left edge of the word over stress preservation. Crucially, the new forms are different from
the examples of Suffixvertauschung of loan-words shown in OE, as in (6). Back-clipping was not a
demonstrably productive process in ME, and it is very sparsely attested between 1500-1700.
Then, in the late 18th century, the trajectory of new forms in this group goes up steeply. Table 1
shows the historical distribution of forms – the data on left-edge clippings are my counts
extracted from the OED, while the numbers on back-clipping are those cited in Lappe (2007: 7970); comparable, though not exactly the same counts are found in Davy (2000) and Berg (2011).
18
For treat: OED: ? A clipped form of tretis, treatise n., the -is being taken as plural suffix. For beck, v. -en interpreted
as infinitive (OED).
12
350
300
289
250
214
200
150
100
50
0
129
74
91
100
8
Fore-clipping
77
48
24
9 10 17 10
Back-clipping
Table 1: Fore-clipping vs. Back-clipping OE to PDE
Upwards of 75% of the words the OED identifies as ‘shortened’ are instances of back-clipping
and their first entries are recorded after 1800. Again, although studies of clipping in English
invariably note that the dominant model of clipping in PDE is back-clipping, the quite dramatic
diachronic reversal of the directionality of this process has not been addressed in the
literature.
3. The big picture. Why does it matter?
According to many sources (Pyles and Algeo 1993: 285, Algeo 1998: 84-5, Davy 2000: 60),
shortening processes are increasingly productive in English, generating 9-15% of new words.
Algeo (1998: 84-5) estimates that as many as 17.5% of the post-1900 new words in English are
shortenings, but his umbrella term includes acronyms, initialisms, and back-formations. In any
case, the portion of the vocabulary to which clippings belong is growing rapidly and provides
new analytical material. This has not escaped the linguists’ attention: the properties of
clippings and other shortenings in PDE have been the target of numerous investigations.
As already noted, however, the data behind the striking historical asymmetry in Table 1
has never been explicitly described or contextualized. Covering every aspect of the diachronic
picture is beyond the scope of this study, but we can start by addressing the evolution of the
modes of clipping with respect to four specific phonological and morphological features:
ONSET, STRESS, morphological identity, ALIGN-L.
ONSET is the prosodic markedness constraint (syllables must have onsets), see Kager (1999:
93). STRESS is a shortcut for a faithfulness constraint that ensures that the stress of the residue
mirrors the stress of the input form; it differs from Lappe’s (2007: 192) MAX-σ1+ stress constraint
which requires that “every segment that is in the initial syllable and has some degree of stress
in the base form has a correspondent in the truncated form” –- it bundles together stress and
initial position, which is inexpedient for the diachronic material. Morphological identity is
prose for the faithfulness constraint Max-BT (Kager 1999: 264), which ensures that every
(morphological) element in the input string has a correspondent in the residue. In the case of
historical clippings it is the root that satisfies the constraint, while prefixal fore-clipping
13
violates it.19 ALIGN-L as used here stands for ALIGN-L (WORD) = ALIGN-L (GRW) for ‘grammatical
word’ (Kager 1999: 118), which matches the left edges of the base and the residue. Lappe’s
(2007: 176) positional constraint MAX-σ1, “every segment in the initial syllable in the base form
has a correspondent in the initial syllable of the truncated form” does the same job without
reference to morphological structure.20
3.1. Clippings as new evidence for ONSET
One of the results of the survey in Section 2 was the finding that historical fore-clipping
invariably respects the ONSET constraint, see (7a), (8), (9). It is only towards the end of the 16th
century that we get some isolated instances of fore-clipping resulting in a V-initial residue.
The early history of this constraint, a very important parameter in the description of PDE
syllable structure, has so far been reconstructed primarily on the basis of metrical usage
(Minkova 2003) and clitic misanalysis, as in (12). The hypothesis based on that evidence is that
ONSET was inviolable in the native OE vocabulary and continued strong in ME. Looking at the
history of early clippings has yielded another piece of evidence in favor of this constraint’s
persistence in ME. Moreover, the list of PDE clippings in Mattiello (2013: 287-295) does not
show a single vowel-initial fore-clipping, including inputs with transparent morphemic
structure such as burb (1997) < suburb. Recent studies of the fine-grained segmental constraints
on clipping in modern English emphasize the importance of the syllable coda (only 4.8% of
clippings are coda-less, see Lappe 2007: 140), but for the historical linguist the persistence of
ONSET is equally important. The rarity of V-initial fore-clippings is doubly motivated: foreclipping as a productive pattern has been receding, and although the general vocabulary
allows V- words: able, eddy, image, oral, such words remain a statistical minority.21 The
innovative type of clipping, back-clipping, prioritizes ALIGN-L and also tolerates vowel-initial
forms. 22 The interplay between lexical onsetless forms and onsetless prefixation (in-, en-, a-, of-,
up-, -un-…) in the history of clippings in English is a matter of further research.
3.2. Clippings and the salience of stress
OE fore-clipping is well-attested, both in loan-words and in the native lexicon. The generation
of new forms obeyed the conjunction of STRESS and ONSET. Fore-clippings of loan-words, as in
OE pistle ‘epistle’, postol ‘apostle’, produce words that fit the Germanic structural and prosodic
template: left-aligned main stress, filled onset. The instability of OE ge- in native words can also
be attributed to the same factors: eliminate initial unstressed syllables, main-stress to the left,
filled onset. In both cases the grammatical and semantic content of the discarded part is
obscured. The opacity of the morphological composition of OE ge-, ME y- input words makes
the morphological identity constraint violable.
In Middle English the OE model of fore-clipping continued in the native word-stock, and
was strongly reinforced by the adoption and adaptation of numerous AN and OF loan-words.
19
A detailed formal account will require the separation of the two constraints.
I will avoid formal OT constraint definitions and the formalization in tableaux, though the proposed changes in
the relative importance of these factors could be tested and presented formally, both in OT and in other
models – the goal here is to draw attention to a previously un-mined set of diachronic material.
21
I have no data on the ratio of CV- vs. V- lexical monosyllables in English, but only 9% of trochaic disyllables in
PDE are of the type able, eddy, see Minkova (2003: 176).
22
Only 8.8% of the PDE clippings (Lappe 2007: 140) are of the type ump < umpire. They are all back-clippings. In PDE
name truncation a filled onset in the initial syllable makes the preservation of that syllable more likely
(Lappe 2007: 105-106).
20
14
ME fore-clipping is enabled primarily by lack of stress at the left edge of the word, producing
lone < alone, slant < aslant, stress < distress, fend < defend etc. The rejection of the original iambs at
the left edge attests to the continuing strength and stability of the Germanic prosodic
contours: STRESS and ONSET continue to be the dominant factors in shaping the residue.
Further, even though some fore-clippings in (7) were attested in Old French, the majority of
them entered the language from Anglo-Norman. This is another new angle on the ways in
which Anglo-Norman diverged from Continental French (Pope 1934: 437-439). Whereas the
majority of the ME fore-clippings are instances of prefixal deletion, we also get forms such as
spute, vangelist, rabite where the process is purely phonological and neither the surplus nor the
residue are based on morphologically autonomous elements.
Post-1500 fore-clippings: tain, trusion, versity, gypsy, possum, coon also obey STRESS, but its
effect is gradually demoted, so that by the 17th c. the surplus can be a syllable with primary
stress: (peri)wig, (mus)squash, (cock)roach, (omni)bus. Situating this gradual downward shift of the
perceptual importance of STRESS within the overall history of English prosody is instructive: by
1500 the Germanic stress rule had become threatened by the competing right-to-left stress
assignment, see Minkova (1997, 2014: 306-310). One can take this one step further and suggest
that at least one of the factors behind the striking reversal of the directionality of clipping
after the 17th c. is related to the hybrid nature of stress in PDE. The availability of multiple
stress contours for the loan-vocabulary: #σ σ́ σ#, #σ́ σ σ#, #σ́ σ σ̀#, #σ̀ σ σ́# for tri-syllabic words,
and a similar proliferation of patterns for longer words, make it more likely that the Germanic
#σ́ (σ)# prosodic template for unaffixed words can be achieved by dropping the right edge, by
back-clipping.
As back-clipping implies preservation of the word’s left edge, the main innovation
identifiable in word-clipping in PDE is ALIGN-L. Preservation of the left edge in PDE is the
dominant pattern of clipping (84.9%, Berg 2011: 7, Lappe 2007: 152, 181), irrespective of
whether the word-initial syllable is stressed or not. While the conjoint effect of STRESS and
ALIGN-L obviously enhances the probability of back-clipping, even in words with non-wordinitial stress, like legitimate, back-clipping is as high as 91.9%.
(14)
Effect of stress on back-clipping vs. fore-clipping in PDE:23
Base form
back-clipping 95.3%
Examples
business > biz
fore-clipping 4.7%
suburbs > burbs
back-clipping 91.9 %
legitimate > legit
fore-clipping 8.1%
machine > sheen
Initial stress:
Non-initial stress:
3.3. Morphological identity and clipping
The morphological identity of the residue in OE depended on the stratification of the
vocabulary. Fore-clipping in loan-words, e.g. OE pistle ‘epistle’, postol ‘apostol’ does not occur at
23
Percentages from Berg (2011: 8).
15
a transparent morphological boundary; dropping the initial unstressed syllable is part of the
process of prosodic nativization. In the native vocabulary the semantic and functional
bleaching of consistently unstressed light-syllable prefixes obscures their morphological
nature, e.g. delf ~ gedelf ‘ditch’, fera ~ gefera ‘companion’. However, the morphological
compositionality of the input remains important in that clipping did not affect the shape of the
root.
In AN and OF borrowings the morphological constituency of the input would have been
non-transparent to a native speaker; the disassociation of prefixal status and stress makes lack
of stress the main enabling factor for clipping, e.g. spute, mend, stress. The residue is no longer
coextensive with identifiable morphological material.
Today the involvement of morphology in clipping remains a vexed issue. In back-clipping
with monosyllabic residues neither the surplus nor the residue can be identified as a
morpheme: croc[odile], lab[oratory], ump[ire]. In non-monosyllabic back-clippings the residue
can be modeled on previously existing and recyclable ‘combining forms’, the term used by the
OED for bound Classical morphemes used in compounding: pseudo- (1425), hypo-(1450), proto(1576), pyro- (1593), gyneco- (1594), Gallo- (1601). In those early combining forms the -o is
directly inherited from Greek connective –o- in compounding, retained and independently
productive in post-classical Latin. Memo (1705), hypo (1711), Demo (1794) < democrat, loco (1833) <
locomotive are back-clippings based on the ‘connective’ –o. It may be the density of -o
combining forms and –o back-clippings that lead to the emergence of –o as an independently
productive suffix, as in wino, cheapo, whammo.24 68 out of 99, or 68.7% of the -o data in Lappe
(2007: 69-70), inherit -o from the input base. For this subset of back-clippings, therefore,
morphological faithfulness remains a factor, albeit low-ranked and violable, and definitely
phonologically restricted.
Fore-clipping presents a somewhat stronger case for the continuing relevance of the
morphological structure of the input. A considerable portion of the fore-clippings start out as
word-formation products: plane, roach, hood, phone, pike are based on compounds or compoundlike forms with a prosodic contour of primary-secondary stress. Whether such fore-clippings,
arguably based on secondary stress, are illuminating with respect to the distinction between
compounds and noun phrases is a matter which I leave open. Thus, as most recently remarked
by Miller (2014: 183), fore-clipping in PDE remains an analytical challenge within current
accounts.
3.4. Clippings and left-alignment
The dominance of back-clipping in PDE is well documented. This innovative pattern has been
extensively analyzed – it preserves the left edge of the input. As far as we can tell from the
existing records, alignment to the left word-boundary played no role in OE, unless one
considers the general Germanic Suffixvertauschung and an isolated form such as OE ylp~elpend,
ME alp < Latin elephantem distant harbingers of later changes. The observance of left-edge
alignment grows steadily after the 15th c. aided by the rapid growth of the loan vocabulary and
the prestige of Classical learning. One of the diagnostics of its rising importance is the
restoration of the input left-edge material in relatively short-lived forms such as in (9): †sturb,
†vangelist, †spittle, were abandoned in favor of disturb, evangelist, hospital.
24
The OED editors suggest that back-clippings such as memo and hypo “probably established an association of the
ending -o with casual or light-hearted use which it has retained ever since.” They also note that “After 1851
this type of clipping becomes, and has remained, extremely common.”
16
4. Summary: the shifting priorities in clipping
The only recorded type of back-clipping in OE is that of first names; hypocoristic shortening is
also recorded in Middle English and strongly productive in PDE. That type of truncation is
therefore typologically stable.
The typology of common-noun clipping has undergone important shifts. The textual
records of Old and Middle English don’t show back-clipping; it started in the 16th century,
possibly on the model of hypocoristic clipping. At that point the first syllable of the word,
stressed or unstressed, became the anchor of the new form. This is manifested both in the
gradual decrease of fore-clipping and in the rise of iambic forms of the type exec, celeb along
with the more predictable fab, temp. The violation of non-finality, a prosodic constraint which
disallows stress on final syllables in OE, and which became more wide-spread in late ME
(Minkova 1997), accounts for the broadening of the available output options. The new hybrid
model of prosodic parsing in PDE: partly morphological, partly Germanic, partly from right-toleft, is reflected in the outcome of clipping.
The historical shift of the phonological and morphological factors identified in this
survey is shown in (15):
(15)
Continuity and innovation in English clippings:
Old English:
STRESS, ONSET >> Morphological identity >> ALIGN-L
Middle English
STRESS, ONSET >> Morphological identity, ALIGN-L
Fore-clipping ONSET >> STRESS >> Morphological identity
PDE:
Back-clipping ALIGN-L >> STRESS >> ONSET >> Morphological identity
What we have gained from the diachronic perspective is, among others, a better
understanding of the difference in the directionality of clipping today. Clippings confirm the
long-known tendency towards monosyllabicity (Jespersen 1933). For PDE Berg (2011) proposes
an account in which the choice of discarding front matter versus discarding material at the
right edge can be seen as a matter of production, favoring fore-clipping vs. perception,
favoring back-clipping. Back-clipping causes less perceptual disruption. This is related also to
the pragmatic-communicative aspect of name-clipping vs. common noun clipping: “first
names are ordinarily heard in highly restrictive contexts such as family circles” (Berg 2011:
12), which allows a higher rate of fore-clippings for such items.25 These are certainly valid
pragmatic characterizations of the existing imbalance between fore- and back-clipping, but
they do not address the emergence of back-clipping at a particular diachronic stage, since they
are universal and not period-specific.
Examining the history of clippings in the context of the properties of the ambient
language at earlier stages opens up additional explanatory strategies. In Early Modern English
as many as 1500 new loans enter the lexicon during each decade between 1500-1700 (Minkova
& Stockwell 2009: 47). This affects the diversity of available prosodic templates. Main stress is
no longer a necessary property of the first root syllable, nor is lack of stress inviolable for
25
In Berg’s account fore-clipping is more susceptible to intentional or unintentional errors, ‘slurring’ and
‘mutilating’ in production, and therefore it is more easily tolerated in restricted contexts, i.e. for personal
names. Berg shows that the rate of deletion of stressed initial syllables is higher for names (12.2%) than for
common-noun clippings (4.7%). The difference is statistically significant.
17
nominal prefixation: Chaucer has initial stress on the nouns subject, proverb, perfect (Minkova
2014: 311). As stress is no longer the primary word-boundary marker, that function begins to
be shared with any left-edge syllable. The entailment for clipping is increased instantiation of
back-clipping. At the same time fore-clipping, traditionally targeting unstressed prefixal
material, is counteracted by broader familiarity with the source language and restoration of
the original lexeme, as in monish > admonish, minish > diminish, faunt > infant. It is also the case
that the attestations of fore-clipping carry more social stigma as being ‘lazy’ (see note 25 on
the association of production and fore-clipping), while PDE back-clippings: pash (1891), artic
(1945), or tranq (1967) etc. are simply ‘cute’, ‘playful’, ‘in-group’, but lack the stigma of
ignorance or carelessness.
Re-examining clippings diachronically is enlightening in terms of the history of ONSET.
The fact that it remains inviolable in fore-clipping from OE to ME and shows a continuing
presence in PDE, is a new window into the reconstructed history of that constraint. While
back-clipping is fully congruent with a top-ranking left-alignment in PDE, fore-clipping mostly
continues the historical template of high-ranked STRESS, ONSET is inviolable, and recoverability
of the morphological identity of the base components is a viable option.
Seen from a broader analytical point of view, the different treatment of ONSET in
clippings of different historical periods and the interplay between different prosodic systems
and the type of clipping, strengthen the position that not all clipping is aleatory, or completely
unregulated. The historical perspective adds another angle to studies claiming that clipping is
a non-arbitrary process, see Fischer (1998: 41-43), Lappe (2007), Jamet (2009), Berg (2011),
Alber, B., & Arndt-Lappe, S. 2012, Mattiello (2013), and the reappraisal in Miller (2014: 182-184).
Further research can go in many directions: can clippings be used as evidence for the
rate of nativization of loan-words in earlier English? Are vowel-initial back-clippings attested
at the same rate as vowel-initial words in the ambient lexicon? What is the effect of frequency
of the prefix and the frequency of the root of the base forms on the occurrence and survival of
clippings? Are there phonological factors that favor, or even guarantee the longevity of early
fore-clippings: why did mend, fend, stress, bus survive while so many others were short-lived?
Can clipped forms be diagnostic of relaxed social attitudes in earlier texts? Can history help us
speculate on the future of clippings?
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